Posts Tagged ‘Music’

You may remember Darius Rucker as the croony lead singer from one of the more lasting bands form the 90’s Hootie and The Blowfish. During that time, I was listening to the likes of “‘Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry,” and “I Only Wanna Be With You.” It’s not often that a band could come across and tug on the strings of random memories from my childhood, but Hootie certainly takes me back to a time when things were changing in my life at a fast pace, and I was learning about new music and stations aside from B94(If you haven’t heard of it, it’s on old Pittsburgh station, its back again, but certainly not the original).

Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and the likes of Tool, were winning my heart over as I was becoming a teenager and falling into the traps of teenage aggression. However, I always had a place in my heart for Hootie, because for some reason, Darius’s voice was just so damn awesome. He hit every note with what seemed like perfection, and never had to strain himself to reach an emotional level to grab the user and bring them to a whole new level.

Now after his first country album release “Back to Them,” which received very sub-par reviews. He comes back with a highly touted monster of a country album, “Learn to Live.” This album is full of emotional tracks, that seems to be written for anyone who has had a hard time in their life, whether it be a traumatic experience like in the song “I Hope They Get To Me in Time.” Or when a father looks ahead to the future or back in time depending on how you look at it in the song of “It Won’t Be Like This For Long.” There is at least one track for everyone on the entire cd, that is made for someone, if your in love with the current country situation that is played on the radio.

My only real gripe with this cd is that its mostly, written in a stereotypical format, as far as the typical country music banter goes, spirituality, life, death, love, and drinkin’. I do however, feel that Darius Rucker’s voice is not given enough justice. While most of the songs are typical with a country album, he has the voice to knock most of the songs out of the park even while singing about something that has been done a bajillion times.

So my final comments come down to this. If you loved Hootie and the Blowfish, and enjoy the music they wrote about. This album will never be that good. However, I urge you to give it a try if you are a country fan as it has many country music stars, making musical cameos, well produced songs, and a voice that just doesn’t give up. For the next review, be prepared. It’s going to be heavy.

Guns and Roses has finally come out with a new album! Although, Slash isn’t in the band anymore, so can it really be called Guns and Roses? However the great news about the release of this album is the fact that Dr. Pepper is giving away a free can of Dr. Pepper from a promise it made a long while ago regarding this much fought over album.

“The soft-drink maker said in March that it would give a free soda to everyone in America if the album dropped in 2008. “Chinese Democracy,” infamously delayed since recording began in 1994, goes on sale Sunday.

“We never thought this day would come,” Tony Jacobs, Dr Pepper’s vice president of marketing, said in a statement. “But now that it’s here, all we can say is: The Dr Pepper’s on us.”

So finally with the release of this album, a major corporation has stuck behind its thoughts on a band that hated each other throughout its entire life span, and will be rewarding everyone with a free can of Dr. Pepper! However there is a catch, you must get the coupon located on Dr. Pepper’s website, and is only available for 48 hours on Sunday.

are both enjoying the zombie dance at the moment. Multiple stories have been popping up about the popular games getting infused with a little Halloween horror and how much of an homage it is giving to the scary undead. I’ve been playing WoW since release and the scourge invasion is as hilarious as it is fun.

GTA4 Zombie

I however am taking sides as there are people who can’t stand to be “griefed.” I haven’t played GTA4 in awhile but will certainly pop it in tonight to see whats up. As for this Halloween thing, its great. It’s finally nice to see games take on the approach of including a culture mix of holidays and game life. If it wasn’t for the Scourge invasion being added for the release of Wrath of The Lich King, I don’t know if I would have signed on to play or just waited until the expansion hit live.

As for Grand Theft Auto, I played it alot, in fact, it was a game that after your done in the story, its kinda like, see what kinda crazy stuff you can do yadda yadda. But, certainly give props to two huge games and their companies throwing in some unique storyline to keep the interest in their games at maximum capacity.

Ever since the release of Burning Bridges, I have been hooked on Haste The Day. I’ve seen them live twice, picked up all their albums and have been eagerly awaiting the release of their newest CD: Dreamer. I will say this now and get this out of the way. This CD is as good if not better than their last release Pressure the Hinges.

Dreamer starts off with a thought provoking first song(68) that immediatly brings on the typical heavy riffs and deep screams that the traditional listener is used to from this band. These songs are well written and its evident. In their first song called 68, Stephen Keech sings the words, “We wall fall to ruins if we don’t bury disguises that we’ve made, We will see the finish if we would carry ourselves to the end of the race, The judges will fall I am my own disease.” This lyrical writing is totally typical and thought provoking, as this band totally envelops themselves with the Christian mantra and belief of good vs. evil.

Their systematic way of creating a headrush in everysong is evident. Although, that’s the major drawback of the CD, alot of the songs flow right into each other without any notation of speed and or tempo change. Meaning to the average listener one may come off as saying it’s repeated and hard to clarify the changes between songs.

However, the notable tracks are surefire monster’s that Haste the Day is used to writing and playing. Haunting(track number 3) Is another great of example of great breakdowns and wonderful writing. Stephen Keech again shows that he is above and beyond basic writing by singing “We are but captives. We are deceased. We know that one day we will be free.” Each person has the right to take away the writing as how it applies to them in the daily world. Which is why I praise Keech’s open end approach to suggesting questions and thoughts in his lyrics.

All in all this CD is a great pick up for $9 at most major retail stores. I am incredibly happy with the purchase, even with times of many songs flowing into each other, there are not many filler tracks on this album. Out of 11 tracks, I would say maybe 2 were just put there to take up space. Finally, it’s just too good to pass up if your influenced by Christian bands, and still want something heavy to rock out too.

Well, another blow for the pirating industry as the Senate passed an RIAA back bill that will further make stricter rules on intellectual property. Information taken from the C-Net article which will be linked below this my take on this subject will be provided below.

The RIAA is the group that is trying to protect musicians and their right to release music and stop the pirating and illegal sharing of copyrighted music. This information and group all began bitching when Napster blew up the scene back in the early 2000’s. Firstly, as you can see, I am not big on the stance of musicians trying to protect their business and their creative commons. However, I give credit to the bands that accept and nurture the sharing abilities of the music to the masses and support getting their names out by any means possible. But, I do agree with the other half in trying to protect their music and making money, because hey its a business.

I finally just don’t think that they will ever be able to stop the pirating of music just yet, because there are so many outlets and so many places. There just isn’t enough jurisdiction on the web to control what the whole world does, and frankly if that ever happens, it’s going to be a sad state for the world, and Big Brother can take into effect. The link to read the full article can be found here. CNet.com – Senate passes RIAA-backed bill

Well E3 is here and news is coming out the woodwork on various games, design changes, exclusive gaming news and all. But, I am most intrigued by the new screens that show the new Xbox navigation system. Apparently were getting avatars much like the Yahoo based system that people can check out and see what were into with a more visual appeal.

I’m not so much excited about it as seeing the screens almost look like it has taken a step back in terms of what it looks like now to possibly what it could look like. My biggest concern just is the overall feel and all that jazz. Most importantly though were going down the slippery slope of the facebook battle of watching us at all times and keeping everyone else updated. There is I believe an option to turn it off, but hopefully they don’t remove it.

Also, a new party update is going to be available with private chat rooms and game joinings to boot. With me being a hardcore bad company player at the moment I am loving it. In fact, I would enjoy that 8 people can play different games and all chat togethor at one time. This is indeed why Xbox live is the social giant that it is today. It isn’t so much about games as it is a multimedia socialiate sharing moment.